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Topic: Appropriating a picture on FB (Read 29417 times)

But people post fanfiction online all time and I think it is generally accepted that plagiarism of those stories is wrong. Why is posting a photo so different? While the stories are posted under a name, anyone can copy and paste the text elsewhere, same as reposting a photo.

But people post fanfiction online all time and I think it is generally accepted that plagiarism of those stories is wrong. Why is posting a photo so different? While the stories are posted under a name, anyone can copy and paste the text elsewhere, same as reposting a photo.

I can think of a few reasons.

It might be that it's because visuals are so widely useful in online posting. Illustrate a blog post? pic. Event I was at? pic. Background for a saying? pic. Avatar? pic. Facebook bling? pic. There's demand for photos in a way that doesn't exist for blocks of text longer than a brisk quote.

It might also have something to do with the fact that practically anyone has the means to take a picture -lots of pictures- now, and because there are so many pictures around, pics in general are devalued. The amount of effort it takes to compose and take a good picture is invisible, because it's so easy to take a passable/almost good picture. The effort it takes to write a novel or fan-fic is a little more obvious to most people, so they tend to respect that effort a little more.

There's also that it's a lot harder to pass off someone else's writing as your own, because writing style is more obvious than picture-composition style.

Another thing I was thinking about is that in school, there's often a certain amount of emphasis on how to cite a book, article, or other piece of text. People don't necessarily learn or remember the details correctly, but I think it sticks in their minds that a longish text is something that ought to be attributed. (Granted, there are people who defy this.) Maybe with multimedia being easier to access, schools are teaching more about citing photos, diagrams, videos, song clips, etc., but this wasn't really even on the radar when I was in school--a total non-issue. So not as many people get that "catch" in their brain that says, "Hey, maybe I should say where I got this..." when looking at a photo.

These are all reasons why a normally polite person might simply not think of citing photos. Hopefully a polite reminder would be all it takes for them to rectify the situation, and be more observant in the future. Obviously there are other people who go around deliberately stealing stuff and taking credit for it, but I would like to think they're in the minority.

You want the credit, you watermark the photo and/or be more diligent about what you post. Caption the photo to say "please credit photographer when sharing or reposting." It's on you to protect your intellectual property. Facebook culture seems to lean towards "photo sharing free-for-all", so I would suggest a different venue for photo sharing if you are bothered by how much access people have to your work.

Did you know that Facebook strips those all away? So even if you put a watermark or copyright embedded in your file, Facebook will remove them.

True, you can add the caption, and I think the OP should do that.

I also think she can say to the woman, "I'm not eager to send you my pictures because I feel strongly that they belong to me. At the very least, I always want credit for them, and you copied one of my pictures into your photo file without crediting me at all. So, I don't know whether you will actually put my credit ON my pictures or not."

There's nothing rude about that. And it gives her the info that perhaps she doesn't have.

You want the credit, you watermark the photo and/or be more diligent about what you post. Caption the photo to say "please credit photographer when sharing or reposting." It's on you to protect your intellectual property. Facebook culture seems to lean towards "photo sharing free-for-all", so I would suggest a different venue for photo sharing if you are bothered by how much access people have to your work.

Did you know that Facebook strips those all away? So even if you put a watermark or copyright embedded in your file, Facebook will remove them.

True, you can add the caption, and I think the OP should do that.

I also think she can say to the woman, "I'm not eager to send you my pictures because I feel strongly that they belong to me. At the very least, I always want credit for them, and you copied one of my pictures into your photo file without crediting me at all. So, I don't know whether you will actually put my credit ON my pictures or not."

There's nothing rude about that. And it gives her the info that perhaps she doesn't have.

That is incorrect. Facebook strips out much of the exif data attached to the picture (GPS, camera specs, etc), but it does not remove watermarks.

You want the credit, you watermark the photo and/or be more diligent about what you post. Caption the photo to say "please credit photographer when sharing or reposting." It's on you to protect your intellectual property. Facebook culture seems to lean towards "photo sharing free-for-all", so I would suggest a different venue for photo sharing if you are bothered by how much access people have to your work.

Did you know that Facebook strips those all away? So even if you put a watermark or copyright embedded in your file, Facebook will remove them.

True, you can add the caption, and I think the OP should do that.

I also think she can say to the woman, "I'm not eager to send you my pictures because I feel strongly that they belong to me. At the very least, I always want credit for them, and you copied one of my pictures into your photo file without crediting me at all. So, I don't know whether you will actually put my credit ON my pictures or not."

There's nothing rude about that. And it gives her the info that perhaps she doesn't have.

But people post fanfiction online all time and I think it is generally accepted that plagiarism of those stories is wrong. Why is posting a photo so different? While the stories are posted under a name, anyone can copy and paste the text elsewhere, same as reposting a photo.

The fact that people get away with stuff in one area doesn't mean that we have to let them get away with it in another.

Fan fiction is an odd beast, too, because people are working in the grey areas between theft, parody, and fair use. I suspect that a lot of copyright holders don't pursue fan fiction writers in part because there's at least some creativity. It's not like someone just posts a full Star Trek script. Posting a picture is flat-out stealing -- worse if there's no credit given. You can also make a case that the stealing of a picture is far more damaging to the photographer than a badly written piece of fan fiction is to a multimillion dollar studio. But that's a choice that the copyright owner gets to make, not the people who want to use the copyright owner's work.

Here's some advice: If you want to use something created by someone else, unless you have explicit permission to do so, don't. Just because other people are getting away with it, don't try. Respect the right of the creator to control what happens to their creation, just as you'd expect someone to respect you when you create something.

There are people who want to share their work and have others use it. I write open source software myself and include a permissive license. For non-software stuff, there's the Creative Commons. That's a conscious choice that I've made. I've had people appropriate my work without permission and it makes me very, very unhappy. (30+ years later, I'm still angry that someone took a band arrangement I made, changed the key and put his name on it.)

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artk2002 - my point wasn't about the relationship between the fanfiction authors and the authors of the works they are basing their stories on -that's a whole different kettle of fish. I was talking about people plagiarizing what other fanfiction authors have written and claiming that it is their own fanfiction.

artk2002 - my point wasn't about the relationship between the fanfiction authors and the authors of the works they are basing their stories on -that's a whole different kettle of fish. I was talking about people plagiarizing what other fanfiction authors have written and claiming that it is their own fanfiction.

To me the wording you used made it sound like it was ok to plagiarize one type of creation and not the other.

No, I don't support plagiarism. I was merely trying to describe how with another self-created (and yes I get that fanfiction is murky in that area, but it was the best analogy I could come up with at the time) item posted on the internet, it is generally expected that someone give credit and not try to appropriate it and therefore, a photograph should similarly be given proper credit to the person who created it and not be appropriated by reposting without mention of its provenance.

When I said it is generally accepted that plagiarism of those stories is wrong, I meant that people generally accept that it is wrong to copy someone else's posted fanfiction and claim it as their own work. I was not saying, yeah it is plagiarism, but people do it all the time.

artk2002 - my point wasn't about the relationship between the fanfiction authors and the authors of the works they are basing their stories on -that's a whole different kettle of fish. I was talking about people plagiarizing what other fanfiction authors have written and claiming that it is their own fanfiction.

Ah... then the explanations are even more simple. 1) They don't understand their rights and so don't make a complaint; and 2) Other than filing a DMCA takedown request, it takes a lawyer to go after the thieves; 3) Since they're working in a legal grey area to begin with, I'm not sure anybody really wants to make waves. That could end up with everybody getting shut down. If I take a photograph and someone makes a copy, I can generally prove that it was mine to begin with. If I make a legally dubious fanfic, I'm not going to go after someone for copying it because they could get me in trouble with the original copyright holder.

To repeat, just because people get away with something, it doesn't mean that that something is legal, moral, or ethical.

No, I don't support plagiarism. I was merely trying to describe how with another self-created (and yes I get that fanfiction is murky in that area, but it was the best analogy I could come up with at the time) item posted on the internet, it is generally expected that someone give credit and not try to appropriate it and therefore, a photograph should similarly be given proper credit to the person who created it and not be appropriated by reposting without mention of its provenance.

No. A photograph shouldn't be reposted at all without the photographer's permission; in truth, neither should fanfic. The fact that some people in the fanfic world are willing to share their work, with some attribution, doesn't mean that a photographer must follow the same philosophy. Each creator has the right to determine how their work can (or cannot) be used. A community, whether it's fanfic or photography, can't force that on them.

To illustrate some of the control a creator can have, look at the "License Features" section here.

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I feel like I live in a different world than a lot of you. Everyone I know shares other people's photos all the time on Facebook, and none of us care.

In fact, I almost expect people to take my photos sometimes. Multiple relatives get photos of my children that way, they save and print them from my facebook page, and I see them later framed in their homes. I shared them for the actual purpose of sharing them, so why would that bother me? And if they want to re-post them on their wall saying "look at my cute nephew" or whatever, I expect that to happen on Facebook. It's a medium I use for that purpose, to share photos of my kids for other family to enjoy. It has never occurred to me to need credit for taking the photo in question. I just don't relate to this.

... Someone passes off one of my novels as his/her own original work? I will fight for that, and fight hard.

Some feel the same way about their photographs.

Yes, but if you feel this way, you should probably not post it to a social networking site. I certainly wouldn't be posting a novel (or even a short story) on Facebook.

Exactly.

I think also that people are attributing bad motives where there are none. There are many valid reasons to post a photo that don't include trying to pass oneself off as the photographer of the photo in question. Obviously if someone is trying to actually claim credit for something they didn't do, that's wrong and rude. But simply posting a photo is not equal to claiming to be the photographer of that photo.

I think I need to explain that I was NOT talking specifically about Facebook. I'm not a participant in that and have no idea what the rules and regulations are there (if any).

I do, however, participate in another site that is explicitly for showing your own pictures and viewing other people's. On that site, unless you mark your photos for creative commons (which has its own set of rules and may or may not require permission from the photographer), all photos are copyrighted and it says so clearly right there on the page. In addition, some of the photographers add another additional notice of copyright either directly on the picture or right underneath it, or they use watermarks.

YET .... there have been many instances of people stealing photos from that site, applying the photos to t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc. and selling those items for profit of course and without permission from the photographer. Some people are even copying and enlarging the pictures and selling them as artwork under their own name.

Obviously if you're putting pictures on Facebook of your own children and making them available to your friends and family members in hopes that they will like them enough to copy them for their own 'scrapbooks', that's a whole different situation.

But if there's any question at all as to whether or not the person who took the picture wants it shared further than his/her original post, I think it would be polite at the very least to ask if it's okay to copy and repost the picture somewhere else and to make sure the actual photographer is at least credited.